Eleanor Gordon Smith

Corwin then asks 17-year-old Nicole how she's feeling about what she just saw.

She says there are some questions that might never be answered.

But her biggest question about why she didn't grow up with her mum, that had an answer.

She was sure her mum had abused her.

For Nicole, the tapes and her memory proved what had happened to her as a kid.

It was a relief.

She'd been worried that she was going to learn that her dad really did coach her to lie about her mum.

Now she could put that aside.

She could remember him the way she always had, as her best friend and a good dad.

But then Corwin published a case study about Nicole.

He didn't use her name.

He called her Jane Doe.

But Corwin's case study became part of a huge dispute that was fracturing psychology in the 90s.

It was called the Memory Wars, and the argument was about whether repressed memories, adults suddenly remembering trauma, were real.

Some scientists believed repressed memories were possible.

Others said no way.

Nicole's videotapes and Corwin's article were co-opted by the side that thought repressed memories were real.

They thought Nicole's case proved it.

Corwin hadn't seen this coming.

I've spoken to him.